Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat
September 23, 2006 5:50 PM   Subscribe

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat. A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks. The assessment is part of the latest "National Intelligence Estimate".
posted by fold_and_mutilate (102 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
That's right. The latest "National Intelligence Estimate".

You can't make this stuff up.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 5:50 PM on September 23, 2006


f_a_m!
posted by rxrfrx at 5:59 PM on September 23, 2006


I don't understand this. I mean, I know we Americans were angry and disgusted by the killing of innocent men women and children on September 11, and we wanted to get back at whoever did it.

But are you telling me that Iraqis and other Muslims can be nationalistic too, also angered when their countries are attacked, and their children killed, based on flimsy and mistaken intelligence?

I thought only Americans loved their children and their country enough to go to war when attacked.
posted by orthogonality at 6:01 PM on September 23, 2006


Didn't Howard Dean get crucified six ways from Sunday back in 2003 saying this. ... ah yes:

LIEBERMAN: The overthrow and then capture of Saddam Hussein has made America safer and made the world safer.
DEAN: I beg to differ. Saddam is a dreadful person and I'm delighted to see him behind bars. But since Saddam Hussein has been caught, we've lost 23 additional troops; we now have, for the first time, American fighter jets escorting commercial airliners through American airspace. Saddam Hussein has been a distraction [from fighting Al Qaeda].
LIEBERMAN: We had good faith differences on the war against Saddam. But I don't know how anybody could say that we're not safer with a homicidal maniac, a brutal dictator, an enemy of the US, a supporter of terrorism, a murderer of hundreds of thousands of his own people in prison instead of in power. To say that we haven't obliterated all terrorism with Saddam in prison is a little bit like saying somehow that we weren't safer after WWII after we defeated Hitler because Stalin and the communists were still in power.

Source: Democratic 2004 Presidential Primary Debate in Iowa Jan 4, 2004
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 6:28 PM on September 23, 2006


lol@"national intelligence"
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:28 PM on September 23, 2006


And how is this news?
posted by trii at 6:32 PM on September 23, 2006


I'm surprised amberglow didn't post this first. Maybe he's on vacation.
posted by Brian James at 6:35 PM on September 23, 2006


I'm pretty sure amberglow is female Brian. And I'd think this is such a brain dead obvious conclusion that most folk wouldn't actually feel the need to point this out. I suspect you'd have to be a deadender to see this as news. Most sentient beings figured this out pretty quickly. Or what trii said.
posted by filchyboy at 7:16 PM on September 23, 2006


Amberglow is a guy, actually. But what did you think of the articles, Brian James?
posted by interrobang at 7:18 PM on September 23, 2006


Film at 11.
posted by fire&wings at 7:21 PM on September 23, 2006


amberglow.
posted by netbros at 7:27 PM on September 23, 2006


Didn't Howard Dean get crucified six ways from Sunday back in 2003 saying this. ... ah yes:

Well, he said that the capture of Saddam didn't make Americans any safer, in other words if everything up to that day had been the same, except we didn't catch him, would we be less safe, more safe, or the equally safe? Deans position was that it didn't make us more safe. History shows that he was right, it seems. It certainly didn't make much of an impact in the insurgency.

It's all about symbolism with these guys, as if appearing tough makes you safe.
posted by delmoi at 7:42 PM on September 23, 2006


Okay, Iraq invasion increases terrorism. We heard yesterday that the amount of torture in Iraq due to the civil war is currently greater than under Saddam. The U.S. has effectively abandoned all hope in Anbar province in Iraq. The Taliban is resurging in Afghanistan. Pakistan negotiates a treaty with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Bin Laden still at large.

Is there anything this administration hasn't screwed up in foreign affairs?
posted by JackFlash at 7:48 PM on September 23, 2006




My apologies to amberglow for my apparent ignorance.
posted by filchyboy at 7:57 PM on September 23, 2006


Ah, an F&M post. It has been too long. Only to be momentarily derailed by the question of amberglow's gender. It's like the first smell of a warm crackling fire as autumn sets in.

Based on my sketchy memory, several members posted at the beginning of the Iraq war that it would not make America any "safer" from terrorist and would likely make them less safe. I think they were tuned in. And I imagine several people called them crazy. Those same people who rarely post in a thread like this because they know they will get eaten alive for their past words on this whole issue.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 8:04 PM on September 23, 2006


Well, the only guy who unequivocally got "eaten alive" for past words on the subject never seemed deterred by that sort of confrontation. The only reason he's not posting here right now (under that username) is that he got banned at some point in the interim. People with a habit of saying stupid shit generally don't care about being reminded how stupid it is.
posted by rxrfrx at 8:09 PM on September 23, 2006


The only reason he's not posting here right now (under that username) is that he got banned at some point in the interim.

I heard he's in Iraq fighting for our freedom.
posted by homunculus at 8:25 PM on September 23, 2006


Story I heard or read somewhere:

An Iraqi father and his kids were shot by snipers. Dad lived, one or more of the kids died. Don't know the full story, maybe they came too close or the sniper overreacted. But the father's reaction...! He was upset that they didn't shoot and kill HIM and not shoot his kids. "Why shoot the children, why not just kill me, kill me but don't shoot the children."

That story cemented, for me, that America will be paying for this war for a long time and the money is the cheapest part.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:32 PM on September 23, 2006


The only reasonable response to this report is "So what?"

The goal of the war was to reduce the threat to us in the long run. But that meant increasing the risk in the short run -- that's always how it is in war.

"Are we safer now than we would have been at this time if we hadn't invaded Iraq?" That question doesn't matter. The question is, "Would we be safer fifty years from now if we hadn't invaded than we will be?"

We don't know the answer yet, of course, but my opinion is that fifty years from now the threat will be lower because of our invasion of Iraq than it would have been if we hadn't invaded.

(...and no, I can't prove it.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 8:38 PM on September 23, 2006


Steven C. Den Beste writes "The only reasonable response to this report is 'So what?'"

Yes, it's just about the same response that like-minded people made when people said in the 1980s "should we really be giving all these weapons to radical islamists, even though they're fighting the Soviets now? What happens after they've beaten the Red Army?"

There's an awfully big empty hole in the ground in downtown Manhattan to remind people of the dangers of not thinking things through. Then again one can just ignore it, in much the same way that people in Pyongyang pretend to never have noticed the Ryugyong Hotel -- by far the biggest building in the city -- until a tourist asks them what it is.
posted by clevershark at 8:56 PM on September 23, 2006


I'm going to make amends for my earlier near-derail by posting a substantive comment to which subsequent commenters can flame way, so here goes. I've got comments for both sides of this debate.

First, I don't think this provides any grist for those who opposed the war at the outset. It's one thing to have opposed the war because you oppose war in general, or because you didn't see the connection to al-Qaeda, because you think Bush is a warmonger, or whatever.

But it's a totally different thing to have opposed the war because you had made a sober and open-minded assessment of our country's war plans for Iraq, its preparation for post-war stability, the disposition of potential insurgent elements in Iraq, and reached the conclusion that while American forces could handily take out the Iraqi forces, the Americans did not have the will or the organization to govern post-war Iraq effectively, and that because of this, instability will result, creating a haven for terrorists.

Hardly anyone opposed the war for this latter reason, but lots of people like to talk as if they did. Just because the war turned out to be a boondoggle doesn't mean that your theory for opposing the war was correct. One of the most frustrating points about this war is that it didn't necessarily have to turn out this way--there are various things that could have been done that would have given us a much better situation now. The incompetence of the occupation has been beyond what even its worst critics could have imagined pre-March 2003. They may have thought an occupation was pointless, unnecessary, and counterproductive, but very few people, even on the left, thought it would have completely disintegrated into what it is today.

Second, with regard to den Beste's comment, I don't think you can justify what's happening now on the grounds that someday things will be better. Fifty years is a long, long time to let the CIA overthrow Saddam, or track him and kill him, or whatever. We could have reached the same end-state without the thousands of lives lost, hundreds of billions spent, and loss of credibility. Hell, we could have called up the CIA guys who handled Central America in the 1970's out of retirement and sent them to Iraq. As horrible as that sounds, we'd probably have been better off today.

Saying that, someday, America will be safer from terrorism, and so this justifies the war, is basically setting yourself up for a post hoc fallacy: the war happened, then America got safer from terrorism, so therefore the war made us safer from terrorism, and so is justified.
posted by Brian James at 9:17 PM on September 23, 2006 [1 favorite]


"The Steven C. Den Beste Guide to US Foreign Policy

Chapter Four: Mutually Assured Destruction



Okay, look, I know, it's gonna fuckin' suck for a while, but look, we fire all our shit, blow the whole wad - The Russkies light off alla there candles, sure, we lose LA, DC, Baltimore, Denver, and about eight other major cities, figure, 100-150 million dead tops, and yeah, yer undies'll glow in the dark for a decade or two, but after that?


FUCKIN EASY STREET.

S A F E R .

I rest my case."
posted by stenseng at 9:20 PM on September 23, 2006 [1 favorite]



posted by knave at 9:20 PM on September 23, 2006


I can't prove it either, but I'd say it's likely that looking back 50 years from now it will be clear that people will point to the invasion of Iraq as the point in which the pendulum swung away from the US as the world's primary super power. It's the beginning of our decline -- not a dip (or peak) in our ascension.

The disaster that this occupation has been and likely will continue to be will have drained the resolve of the American people for armed conflict in the region. Other powers like Iran will have been emboldened by our failure to achieve long-term military victory/nation building. They are already emboldened, and that will only be worse when we finally tuck tail and withdrawal from the region allowing it to collapse into bloody civil war.

Moderates in the region, who just wanted to lead their lives as best they could, will be galvanized against US imperialism providing growing support for radical ideology that is very much opposed to the US. A whole new generation of motherless and fatherless children will grow up blaming the US (and this in a region that is notorious for holding some very long grudges -- 50 years is nothing). The bills for this little diversion of ours will be coming due in 50 years, and who knows if we'll have the funds to do anything but inflate our way out of the mess.

Of course, I can't prove any of this. It's just my opinion. But then, my opinion of the way this thing was likely to go has been a whole lot more accurate so far than the people who've been propagating this war.

I can tell you this. If we'd done nothing, then in 50 years Saddam would likely have been dead anyway -- and given that we now know that he had not started up his weapons programs and was in fact quite contained we wouldn't be likely to be much worse off. Hell, given that there's more torture there now (to say nothing of innocent deaths) than under the thumb of that maniac, even the people of Iraq would have been better off if we'd let sleeping snakes lie.

We could have taken Cuba out roughly 40 or 50 years ago. I doubt you'd find very many people who'd say that would have made us any safer though.
posted by willnot at 9:22 PM on September 23, 2006 [1 favorite]


The Steven C. Den Beste Guide to US Foreign Policy

Actually, if you want my "guide to foreign policy", here it is.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 9:27 PM on September 23, 2006


Wow. That's the dumbest collection of hyper-simplistic generalizations leading to shallow and meaningless "analysis" I've seen in quite some time.
posted by stenseng at 9:31 PM on September 23, 2006


(...and no, I can't prove it.)

That's a wildly poor defense for an assertion of such low merit.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:35 PM on September 23, 2006


Is there anything this administration hasn't screwed up in foreign affairs?? Seriously?
posted by edgeways at 9:47 PM on September 23, 2006


The only reasonable response to this report is "So what?"

Having an opinion is one thing, but stating that anyone who disagrees with your opinion is "unreasonable" is pretty stupid. Who the hell are you to decide what's "reasonable" and what's not?

And 50 years from now? This oil will be gone and no one will give two shits about that region except the people living there, and beyond that things will have changed so much that it will be impossible to tell how they would have been if we hadn't gone in. But I do know we and the Iraqis would both be better off. You won't be any more able to "prove" it then then you are now.

Also, just like Vietnam, if things do go bad people like you will just claim the problem is that we left, not that we ever went in. "If only we'd stayed" You'll say, "It's all your fault."
posted by delmoi at 9:52 PM on September 23, 2006


Hell, we could have called up the CIA guys who handled Central America in the 1970's out of retirement and sent them to Iraq.

Uh, we did ('80s, though).
posted by kirkaracha at 9:53 PM on September 23, 2006


Mr. den Beste: Are we safer from communism because of our actions in Vietnam in the 60's and 70s? How about our actions in Korea in the 50s? What contributions to our present situation did these make? How do you prove this?
posted by wobh at 9:54 PM on September 23, 2006


Mr. den Beste: Are we safer from communism because of our actions in Vietnam in the 60's and 70s? How about our actions in Korea in the 50s? What contributions to our present situation did these make? How do you prove this?

Actually, those things did make a difference in the Cold War, but it's impossible to prove any such assertion about history, and it would take a book to even make the attempt.

The only place you'll find rigorous proofs is in pure mathematics.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 9:59 PM on September 23, 2006


I don't see how anyone could claim that the goal of going back to Iraq was to make the USA safer. That just doesn't make any sense. The really sad part is the government and pundits parroting that line don't believe it for a second, but the people that listen do.
posted by bob sarabia at 10:02 PM on September 23, 2006


The only place you'll find rigorous proofs is in pure mathematics.

You won't find such rigorous thinking in neoconservative foreign policy, that's for sure. At least, recorded history used to be based on rational thought and fact.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:04 PM on September 23, 2006


What difference did they make? How did they affect the ultimate fall of the Soviet Union? What impact have they had on the spead of communism elsewhere in the world? Is there less communism now than there would have been?
posted by wobh at 10:09 PM on September 23, 2006


But it's a totally different thing to have opposed the war because you had made a sober and open-minded assessment of our country's war plans for Iraq, its preparation for post-war stability, the disposition of potential insurgent elements in Iraq, and reached the conclusion that while American forces could handily take out the Iraqi forces, the Americans did not have the will or the organization to govern post-war Iraq effectively, and that because of this, instability will result, creating a haven for terrorists.

This was exactly my position, and I was called un-American for it. Conservatives -- and some liberals -- refused to entertain any discussion of the war.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:12 PM on September 23, 2006


But it's a totally different thing to have opposed the war because you had made a sober and open-minded assessment of our country's war plans for Iraq, its preparation for post-war stability, the disposition of potential insurgent elements in Iraq, and reached the conclusion that while American forces could handily take out the Iraqi forces, the Americans did not have the will or the organization to govern post-war Iraq effectively, and that because of this, instability will result, creating a haven for terrorists.

This Onion article reflected the commonly held positions at that time, I thought. Point/Counterpoint (The Onion, March 26, 2003)

I opposed the war on Iraq because they hadn't exhausted peaceful means to resolving the points being argued. Namely, the UN weapons inspectors had no conclusive evidence to support so drastic a measure as pre-emptive war. I sensed that the WMD claims were just diplomatic cover for what the US intended to do anyway (on the basis that you don't move that much material into the region with no intentions of invading. The logistics practically demanded it -- material breach or no.)

I also realized very early on that the case for war was being built upon the deception of the American people and the world. That the theme "9/11= TERROR = IRAQ" was a psyop with no basis and no proof. Personally I was outraged that they were diverting our attention from the War on Terror (meaning: Al Queda and Afghanistan) to Iraq. I felt it was a slap in the face to those who died on 9/11, to divert the battle from the people who murdered them.

By the time Bush made those deceptive claims in the 2003 SOTU, I wondered aloud during the speech if the President was allowed to use baldfaced lies in his annual address. I wondered if that was in violation of the law against giving false testimony to Congress. Specifically, I knew that the claim of uranium from Africa was based on forgeries and contradicted by more than one independent US investigation. I also knew that the Energy Dept was disputing the purpose of the aluminum tubes, a dispute which he portrayed with absolute certainty. These were lies, and he knew it.

At the time of invasion, I knew about the existence of INR's "Future of Iraq" project which was shelved by the White House, which was a clue that they weren't focused on postwar planning. I always doubted the claims of those who said it would be quick, that oil money would pay for reconstruction, that it would be analogous to the first Gulf war in terms of duration, casualties and costs. It also became pretty clear what their priorities were very early on in the run to Baghdad, when US troops were ordered to bypass known weapons sites and gov't records buildings, but to guard the oil ministry and pipelines.

I was not prescient or anything like that. I just paid close attention. And I was ridiculed for it by my own elected leaders, and their media sycophants. So was everyone else who was thinking along the same lines as me. I would have been overjoyed to find my skepticism unfounded ad unwarranted, but that has not been the case. Each new pronouncement has been further reason for skepticism, until the entire endeavor has become a deadly charade, a farce of Shakesperean proportions.

And everyone who got it completely wrong is still around, giving us their latest predictions and foreign policy "wisdom", as if their credibility was unquestionable. I await their comeuppance, and am equally skeptical as to whether they'll ever actually receive it on this plane of existence.
posted by edverb at 10:20 PM on September 23, 2006 [1 favorite]


Steven, I noticed while checking out your foreign-policy guide that, while you reside in Oregon, your website is registered in Niue.

Why do you hate American domains?
posted by rob511 at 10:25 PM on September 23, 2006 [1 favorite]


The goal of the war was to reduce the threat to us in the long run

No, you are mistaken, sir. The purpose of the invasion (What war?) was to disarm the Iraqi government because they were allegedly planning to attack the US with weapons of mass destruction in (the short term) very near future.
posted by jaronson at 10:41 PM on September 23, 2006


did it take an expensive group of agency personel to figure this out?

it's like concluding from an experiment involving a hive of bees that poking a stick into the hive of bees will create more danger.

thousands
of people have said this before. props to scott ritter. : He warned that if the United States unilaterally launches any military action against Iraq, it would "forever change the political dynamic which has governed the world since the end of the second World War, namely the foundation of international law as set forth in the United Nations charter, which calls for the peaceful resolution of problems between nations."

Ritter resigned as chief weapons inspector for the United Nations in August 1998, saying that the U.N. Security Council and U.S. government had fatally undermined his team's attempts to locate and eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
posted by localhuman at 10:44 PM on September 23, 2006


Soopriiiise Soopriiiise Soopriiiise!

Not like everyone with a brain hasn't been saying this since day fucking one. There should be a polygraph and IQ test before every election.
posted by Kickstart70 at 10:46 PM on September 23, 2006


The .nu domain is controlled by NuNames in Cambridge Mass. The few hundred residents of the island of Niue licensed the domain to NuNames, a nonprofit registrar, and a certain percentage of the domain registration fee is supposed to be used to bring internet service to the residents of the island.

Why did I use NuNames? Mostly because I wanted nothing whatever to do with the cutthroat .com/.net/.org jungle -- and since 2001 when I registered my domain name I have again and again been thankful that I did so, as I hear horror story after horror story of domain hijacking and other crap like that.

Besides which, denbeste.com was already taken. (It's the home page for a company that hauls hazardous wastes. Presumably they're relatives, but I don't have any idea who they are.)

None of which has anything whatever to do with this thread.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:47 PM on September 23, 2006


den Beste, I'm sorry, it's rude of me to sit here and throw out questions like this without telling what I'm about here.

In your comment above I was struck at how you had asserted that it was unreasonable to be concerned about the short term consequences of the war in Iraq with respect to our long term goals of ending (or reducing) radical Islam and terrorism. In asserting this I also inferred that you believe that your faith that it'll all work out in the long run was more reasonable than considering these short term consequences.

If I misunderstand your position here, again I'm sorry. I typed in haste (as I'm sure we all do, it's metafilter).

I guess I mean that, of course, faith in the future is not more "reasonable" than an analysis of the current results. But often, faith and hope is what get's you through. I know that when I hear the news I often think, "Gosh, I sure hope this works out in the long run, because, right now, this is a serious, big-time, balls on the table, screw-up."

And of course, as you said, you can't really prove anything about the future or the past for that matter. Just today I was at Powell's and bought an Anchor Atlas of History (re-bought, I used to have it but I lost it some time ago.) and have been paging through it this evening and marveling at the swirl of of human history.
posted by wobh at 10:54 PM on September 23, 2006


...and no, I can't prove it.

But there is significant proof of the opposite... that IN THE LONG GODDAMNED RUN we will NOT be safer. Jesus. Oh Unless your talking ten thousand years from now. Then yes. By god, George Bush's trillion-dollar-debt-inducing failure in the heart of the most strategically necessary region on the planet will, in ten-thousand years be a resounding success.

Now, I can't prove the world is actually an enormous cyst on the anus of a gigantic galactic frog. And while I realize there seems to be reams of evidence to the contrary. IE: That the world is NOT an enormous cyst on the anus of a gigantic galactic frog... my reaction to that evidence is... eh... "so what."

Why. Because I am a moron.


But it's a totally different thing to have opposed the war because you had made a sober and open-minded assessment of our country's war plans for Iraq...blah blah blah


Strawman. First. I DID oppose this war for this reason. MANY people did. AND many also opposed it because it is immoral.

Something as big as a war... a war we were DESTINED to lose in such a big way... can and usually IS opposed for all sorts of reasons. And. ALL of them are legimate.

And our leaders should have listened.

But what do they and thier idot sockpuppet spin trolls do? They blame US! They go out on the internet and blame us for being goddamned right.
posted by tkchrist at 11:07 PM on September 23, 2006


Utter insanity. Fifty years from now, I might be a plutocrat married to a 25 year old bikini model. However, I don't make important life decisions based on hopes.

(Well, my hopes are actually much more interesting and achievable, but still.)

Shorter Den Beste: Throw away a lot of money and lives, and maybe things will be better. In 50 years. When most of us mefites are all dead or dying. But delmoi is correct to point out that many clueless ideologues will bray about how we "lost Iraq" because of the librul media, and not because we didn't have a plan (link to the Washington Times btw, hardly a leftist propaganda machine).

Honestly, how do you live with yourself Steven? You are a complete joke.

(And nicely put willnot.)
posted by bardic at 12:17 AM on September 24, 2006


(And btw, it took us four years to deal with the much greater and more obvious threats of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. Four years. And you're telling me it'll take 50 to deal with determined yet non-state powers hiding in caves? To quote Napolean Dynamite, "Idiots." And raging, raging cowards.)
posted by bardic at 12:45 AM on September 24, 2006


Steven C. Den Beste wrote "We don't know the answer yet, of course, but my opinion is that fifty years from now the threat will be lower because of our invasion of Iraq than it would have been if we hadn't invaded."

Fifty years is an awfully long time to speculate. For one thing, that's a long enough time for 1001 different events to potentially alter the vector of global security and stability. Would WWII have been predictable in 1900? Was 9/11 predicted in 1960 or 1970?

On a more concrete note, in December 2004, this same National Intelligence Council released a report resulting from Project 2020: Mapping the Global Future. In its Executive Summary, they list potential situation in the year 2020 under two categories - Relative Certainties and Key Uncertainties. The relevant entries are,

Relative Certainties
Growing power of nonstate actors.
Political Islam remains a potent force.
Arc of instability spanning Middle East, Asia, Africa.

Key Uncertainties
Impact of religiosity on unity of states and potential for conflict; growth of jihadist ideology.
More or fewer nuclear powers; ability of terrorists to acquire biological, chemical, radiological, or nuclear weapons.
Precipitating events leading to overthrow of regimes.
posted by Gyan at 12:53 AM on September 24, 2006


What edverb and tkchrist said.

I too would have been overjoyed to find my skepticism unfounded and unwarranted, but that has not been the case.
The military is a shite vehicle for persuing international affairs at the best of times. Under the control of these sociopathic paranoid fantasists it had little chance of success, so divorced from reality are they.

But, the outcome was good. They and their associates have got rich from fleecing the US taxpayer and the economic future of the US. The same for UK private 'logistical support' (mercenaries), which is the reason Tony Blair was so keen to leap aboard the war-wagon IMHO. They have promoted fear and paranoia both at home and internationally, they are terrorising their own people and profiting from it. Just as they alluded to in the PNAC documents.

The likelyhood of prosecuting the criminals responsible for this global catastrophy, before they become 'senile' or 'infirm' is not high.

Oh, and it's not a war, it's an illegal invasion. An invasion that has resulted in the destruction of much of the history of the human race in the area as archeological sites and museums are ransacked, alongside the human toll. The area to the north of Iraq is believed to be the location of the biblical 'garden of Eden'.
posted by asok at 2:27 AM on September 24, 2006



Illegal occupation of a foreign country resulting in a resistance movement by the occupied.... Just what is the world coming to?
posted by twistedonion at 2:53 AM on September 24, 2006


Who believes that Iraq had anything to do with making America safer from terrorism? People who do sound like girls the morning after who stammer "but you said I was 'the one' ". It was 100% about seizing control of Iraqi oil and creating a large military beachhead in the middle east to ensure the united states can project power in the region. They gave it a democracy and anti-terrorism coating to make it more paletable for people who would be uncomfortable with naked imperial aggression.

Is America safer? From terrorism - no. From running out of oil - maybe. Which is the bigger threat to the American way?
posted by srboisvert at 3:08 AM on September 24, 2006


The only reasonable response to this report is "So what?"

That is hardly the only reasonable response. Another reasonable response would be to fire everyone involved in the debacle so that the same mistakes are not repeated.

The goal of the war was to reduce the threat to us in the long run. But that meant increasing the risk in the short run -- that's always how it is in war.

That is not how the war was sold to the American public, nor is it how the war was envisioned in the White House according to almost any account you want to read.

"Are we safer now than we would have been at this time if we hadn't invaded Iraq?" That question doesn't matter. The question is, "Would we be safer fifty years from now if we hadn't invaded than we will be?"

Well, my opinion is that fifty years from now the threat will be greater than it would have been had we not invaded Iraq and used the resources we spent there more efficiently and intelligently.

[... and no, I can't prove it either]

The fact of the matter is we have spent and continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars that could otherwise better spent, sent and continue to send thousands of our soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians to their deaths, destroyed international goodwill and credibility that would have served us much better in preventing future terrorist attacks, and have only an embittered and aggrieved citizenry in Iraq to show for it.

Excuse us if promises of "Oh yeah, just wait 50 years and then you'll see" are leave us somewhat unconvinced.
posted by moonbiter at 4:12 AM on September 24, 2006


It was utterly foreseeable that the net impact of ousting Saddam would be a significant increase in the power of Iran. First, the anti-Iranian counterforce represented by Iraq would be eliminated when the Shiites took control of Iraq via the electoral process. Given the historic religious and economic ties involving the Shiite shrines in Iraq, the resumption of economic connections between Iran and Iraq was also foreseeable. The US has condoned the training and equipment of anti-Baathist militias by Iran: the Badr Corps, the Mehdi Army; these fundamentalist Shiite forces will dominate the new Iraqi Army that the US is paying for. These things were exepcted to happen--and did.

It is rarely advisable to go to war if it will weaken your forces and strengthen those of your enemies. Unless, of course, what you're really interested in is the oil. . . .
posted by rdone at 5:48 AM on September 24, 2006


The only reasonable response to this report is "So what?"

Well, OK. We'll have to take your word for it. After all, your analysis in the past was profound.

Example 1:
We have to make it "happen there". We have to take Iraq and place major military forces right in the middle of all the Arab nations so that it cannot be ignored. It has to be a wire into the nerve. It has to be right in their faces. It has to weigh on their minds. It has to be a demonstration of strength so massive, so unambiguous as to prove that the only reason we didn't keep going and conquer them all is because we didn't want to. Not that we were restrained by international norms, for that's a sign of weakness. Not that we reached the limit of our abilities, because that proves the same thing. That we could have but decided not to because they weren't worth it -- but that we will if we end up changing our minds. That's what they need to believe, and to keep believing.

That is part of what will start the process of change in the region. The government of Saudi Arabia continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year supporting Wahhabism, and it will be a lot easier to convince them to stop doing so if the First Armored Division and First Infantry Division are sitting 20 miles from their border, ready to roll at a moment's notice. (They're being wasted in Germany right now; this seems like a better way to use them, don't you think?)

Even after the disaster of the Gulf War, Iraq is still militarily stronger than any of the other Arab nations at least overtly. It's the one that they all think of that way, anyhow. If we end up crushing it like a bug (a big "if", it has to be admitted) then it becomes the object lesson which we must set so that we will be viewed by the "Arab Street" as strong which is ultimately the only real thing they actually do respect.
Example 2:
Why is it that the US is concerned about Iraq getting nukes when we don't seem to be as concerned about Pakistan or India or Israel? Why are we willing to invade Iraq to prevent it from getting nukes, but not Pakistan to seize the ones it developed? It's because those nations don't embrace a warrior culture where suicide in a good cause, even mass death in a good cause, is considered acceptable. (Those kinds of things are present in Pakistan but don't rule there as yet.)

It's certainly not the case that the majority of those in the culture which is our enemy would gladly die. But many of those who make the decisions would be willing to sacrifice millions of their own in exchange for millions of ours, especially the religious zealots. If such people get their hands on nuclear weapons, then our threat of retaliation won't prevent them from using them against us, or threatening to do so. Which is why we can't let it happen. The chance of Israeli or Pakistani or Indian nukes being used against us is acceptably small. If Arabs get them, then eventually one will be used against us. It's impossible to predict who will do it, or when, or where, or what the proximate reason will be, but it's inevitable that it will happen. The only way to prevent it is to keep Arabs from getting nukes, and that is why Iraq is now critically important and why time is running out...
Example 3:
With the fall of Tikrit, the war in Iraq is over. Our military accomplished all the political goals we needed from it, both in terms of the local situation and in terms of more global effects, and did a superb job. From top to bottom it was a masterful performance...

In his State of the Union address in 2002, President Bush identified three nations as what he called the "Axis of Evil": Iraq, Iran and North Korea. At the time this was widely dismissed as rhetoric, or as the obsession of an idiotic cowboy, or as grandstanding. But as events have shown, it's never safe to assume that Bush doesn't actually mean what he says, and with the fall of Iraq, the extremist leadership in Iran is getting distinctly nervous. They are looking at American troops to the east in Afghanistan, and to the west in Iraq, and rising discontent and resistance inside Iran itself, and they see laser dots on their own chests.

That the theocracy would rather not share Saddam's fate goes without saying. That their situation is exceedingly perilous is equally obvious. That they'd rather talk things over than to be the next target is not surprising.

That they actually think they can get rewarded, that they think they're actually morally owed things by us, shows that they're still living in a delusional world. But they're not alone in that; there's a lot of that going around right now in the world.

However, delusions have a tendency to eventually collide with reality, and when that happens the delusions get punctured, and there seems to be markedly less delusion now than there was a month ago. And the mere fact that the theocrats are clearly extremely nervous is itself a victory for us. It's yet another of the beneficial side effects bought with the blood of our soldiers in Iraq. No one out there is taking comfort any longer in America's old reputation for decadent apathy or aversion to risk...
Example 4:
I suspect that for most Iraqis, the single most astounding aspect of the American occupation (besides the fact that it finally happened, at long last) has been that we have not been arresting those in Iraq who have publicly criticized us. When mullahs returning from exile in Iran made speeches demanding we withdraw and that Iraq become a Khomeneiite theocracy, we left them alone.

Some here feared that tolerating that would cause more and more Iraqis to flock to support such movements, and that the majority Shiites might coalesce around such a political position.

But the exact opposite has occurred: those early opposition speakers were seen by most Iraqis as being noteworthy because of their public opposition, not because their message was attractive. Many watched attentively to see how we'd respond. When the proto-theocrats were not persecuted, other Iraqis with other opinions began voicing them, too. Some were critical of the Americans, some were supportive, some were mixed. A lot of what they talked about didn't have anything to do with us at all. But the one thing most of them came to agree on was that free expression itself was a pretty neat thing, even if they didn't agree about much else. Since the would-be Iraqi theocrats wanted to take that away from them again, support for the theocrats has not materialized, and most of them have ceased advocating establishment of an Islamic Republic in Iraq.

There's a line we don't let them cross. The self-declared "Mayor of Baghdad" was ultimately taken into custody, mostly to get him out of circulation for a while. Eventually he was released and, having had his fifteen minutes of fame, vanished from view. Certain Islamic extremists actively preached jihad and directly advocated violent attacks against the Americans, and some of them have been informed that this is not acceptable.
posted by y2karl at 6:04 AM on September 24, 2006 [1 favorite]


We don't know the answer yet, of course, but my opinion is that fifty years from now the threat will be lower because of our invasion of Iraq than it would have been if we hadn't invaded.

(...and no, I can't prove it.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 8:38 PM PST


What a cowardly reply. "We don't know"

Hope you are paid well for your posts.
posted by rough ashlar at 6:10 AM on September 24, 2006


In your comment above I was struck at how you had asserted that it was unreasonable to be concerned about the short term consequences of the war in Iraq with respect to our long term goals of ending (or reducing) radical Islam and terrorism.
posted by wobh at 10:54 PM PST


Notice also how Steven C. Den Beste is not actually going INTO the military to not only increase the long term odds of success in the goals he has stated exist, but ALSO make sure the military has the manpower they need.

Why is that Steven? You afraid?
posted by rough ashlar at 6:22 AM on September 24, 2006


It's the home page for a company that hauls hazardous wastes.

comedy gold
posted by matteo at 7:01 AM on September 24, 2006


Hah.

Someday, Flypaper Theory will join Domino Theory in the Foreign Policy Hall of Shame.

"Fight the terrorists over there, so that we don't need to fight them over here."

Sure, that works..... If you assume that the number of enemies is a fixed quantity.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:03 AM on September 24, 2006


A whole lot of people have died for these misty conjectures. There is no strictly rigorous proof outside of math, but there are degrees of rigorousness and degrees of integrity in arguments.
posted by sonofsamiam at 7:04 AM on September 24, 2006


And everyone who got it completely wrong is still around, giving us their latest predictions and foreign policy "wisdom", as if their credibility was unquestionable. I await their comeuppance, and am equally skeptical as to whether they'll ever actually receive it on this plane of existence.
`Thou seyst nat sooth,' quod he, `thou sorceresse,
With al thy false goost of prophesye!
Thou wenest been a greet devyneresse;
Now seestow not this fool of fantasye
Peyneth hir on ladyes for to lye?
Awey!' quod he. `Ther Ioves yeve thee sorwe!
Thou shalt be fals, paraunter, yet to-morwe!
Democrats have become Cassandra: forever cursed with the intellect to predict the future that no one will ever believe.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:12 AM on September 24, 2006


A whole lot of people have died for these misty conjectures. There is no strictly rigorous proof outside of math, but there are degrees of rigorousness and degrees of integrity in arguments.
posted by sonofsamiam at 7:04 AM PST


Not when your words have made a small contribution to getting this nation through the worst part of the crisis.
posted by rough ashlar at 7:12 AM on September 24, 2006


The goal of the war was to reduce the threat to us in the long run

No, you are mistaken, sir. The purpose of the invasion (What war?) was to disarm the Iraqi government because they were allegedly planning to attack the US with weapons of mass destruction in (the short term) very near future.


You are both mistaken. Skbolsvert hit it right on: The purpose of going into Iraq was to have a foothold right in the heart of the middle east with unlimited resources (oil) for - and Steven C. Den Beste will love this - the next 50 years. We've built 14 permanent bases in Iraq. Who thinks these are for the Iraqi army?

We've been in South Korea for over 55 years (things are going great there huh Steven C.D.B.) and to this day, the south Korean army can not make a strategic move without our say-so. Although I suspect many south Koreans are happy we are 'watching their back', I suspect there are just as many tired of the hegemony.

Is this report a surprise? No. In fact, it demonstrates the obvious conclusion that would be drawn from most logically thinking types when removed from the party-line bullshit. This idea that Iraq was the home to some terroristic movement was one of the biggest lines of crap the administration shoved down our throats (that and the widely rejected notion that those aluminum tubes were viable for uranium enrichment). Dictators hate any organized group that could potentially overthrow them and terrorists are at the top of that list. Saddam didn't have a terrorism problem....and you know what? He still doesn't. Now it's just the poor fucks in Iraq that have to deal with it. Nice huh?
posted by j.p. Hung at 7:19 AM on September 24, 2006


Well, OK. We'll have to take your word for it. After all, your analysis in the past was profound...

The quotes that followed would be greatly enhanced by converting them to a Chick style comic. Comedy gold.
posted by juiceCake at 7:51 AM on September 24, 2006


j.p. hung:

No, you are mistaken, sir. The purpose of the invasion (What war?) was to disarm the Iraqi government because they were allegedly planning to attack the US with weapons of mass destruction in (the short term) very near future. < --- this was the i>given reason for the invasion of Iraq. I don't think the poster meant to say that it was the real reason.
posted by exlotuseater at 8:02 AM on September 24, 2006


'Are we safer now than we would have been at this time if we hadn't invaded Iraq?' That question doesn't matter.

President Bush claims that we are safer now because we invaded Iraq. This report his government prepared says we're not. Seems like the question does matter.

It's the home page for a company that hauls hazardous wastes.

Isn't bullshit a hazardous waste?
posted by kirkaracha at 8:17 AM on September 24, 2006


wxlotuseater, ok, the poster meant that...agreed. But as for the Administration, that was one of a dozen reasons given....all of them bullshit.
posted by j.p. Hung at 8:26 AM on September 24, 2006


I'm going to be a bit of a knob and quote myself from an interview back in 2003:

I think he’s doing us far more harm than good in terms of national security. He’s waged this pre-emptive war in the name of national security, but the way he’s gone about it has actually ensured that our national security will be in a much worse state 10 or 20 years from now because of the way he’s inflamed tension in the Muslim world. I think he’s done more to generate more terrorists than to eradicate them.
posted by LondonYank at 8:38 AM on September 24, 2006


rough ashlar: I meant in general, not in any specific, prompted by den Beste's comment about the Cold War.

The long and short of it is: nobody trusts the neocons and PNACers anymore, nobody else feels a 50 year war is necessary to save our civilization (yeah right), and nobody wants any part of this foolishness any more. Had we been dealt with with even a modicum of honestly by our employees the public servants, I have no doubt that things would be very, very different, and a lot of dead people would still be alive.
posted by sonofsamiam at 8:51 AM on September 24, 2006


Isn't bullshit a hazardous waste?
posted by kirkaracha at 8:17 AM PST


Only when taken orally and unchewed.
posted by rough ashlar at 8:57 AM on September 24, 2006


LondonYank: a prophet without honor in either of his own countries.

Knowing how it was going to turn out only makes watching it turn out so badly that much more agonizing.
posted by rdone at 9:48 AM on September 24, 2006




Does this news have to get posted every time? This is basically a double-post.

I mean, most of us here agree that the "War on Terror" has not made us safer and was a crock to begin with. Wake me when Bush admits the same. That'll be worth posting.
posted by msacheson at 10:12 AM on September 24, 2006


exlotuseater: Thanks

msacheson: Sorry, if we woke you.
posted by jaronson at 10:32 AM on September 24, 2006


But wait !! There's more !!

What The War Is About
..Iraq is the pilot project of New Arabia. This war will be fought, ultimately, in the hearts and minds of the "Arab Street" and we must convince them that our way is better than the one they currently have for them.

The problem in Japan in the late 1940's was different in detail but the same in gross: there were parts of the previous Japanese culture which were dangerous but much that was valuable; the new system was definitely Japanese but not the same as before.

Old Japan became new-and-better Japan; it did not become new America. Japan didn't become a clone of America as the result of American occupation and the American imposition of reform, but it did change quite radically. And it ceased to be a danger to us, and the lives of individual Japanese improved. We won, and so did they. They adopted (by coercion and persuasion) some American ideas and policies and integrated them into Japanese culture, and the new system was born.

That's what will be needed in Iraq: we must make them feel as if they've won because their lives have improved. We will force on them certain things which will replace the most diseased aspects of what they have now, and that will be integrated into their culture and create a new-and-better Iraq. They must begin to achieve, for once they do their pride will be satisfied and their resentment will subside, and they will cease to be a danger to us. Nation building in Iraq is a strategic requirement for the US for purely selfish reasons. But we cannot get what we need by placing a new friendly dictator in charge to replace the old unfriendly dictator. Iraq itself must be reformed.

This means that we are fighting this war to free the Iraqi people. We're not doing so out of altruism, but the effect for the Iraqi people will be the same as if we were. (We didn't free Eastern Europe from Soviet rule out of altruism, but they don't seem to mind.) And we need Iraq to keep being a success, because it will induce reform in the rest of the Arab world, leading to further and broader Arab success, rising pride, decreasing shame, lessening resentment and less violence aimed at us.

Arab shame at Arab failure is the "root cause" of this war. Arab reform leading to Arab success is the solution. Arab culture must liberalise, and we no longer have the luxury of waiting for that to happen on its own.

We have to embark on this effort because the only alternative is to kill them all. If we don't work to institute deep cultural reform, there will be more and more attacks against us which are progressively more and more damaging, and our reprisals will become more and more catastrophic. We have to fight now to prevent unconscionable slaughter later.

If we interfere now, we can help both the Arabs and ourselves. If we wait, both they and us will bleed and die.

This is, of course, a very high level view presented in summary form; it deliberately simplifies the issues and therefore it necessarily leaves out many nuances.
posted by y2karl at 11:06 AM on September 24, 2006


The question is, "Would we be safer fifty years from now if we hadn't invaded than we will be?"


it's a misleading question, though ... there are too many technological and social trends that could overpower the effect of the iraq invasion to the point where it may not make any real difference in safety

the better question would be "will our relations with and standing with the rest of the world be better in 50 years?" ... the only clear statement i can make about that is that they were better before the invasion than after ... which means that we have much further to go in acheiving good relations 50 years from now than we would have if we didn't invade iraq

the middle east will still be somewhat hostile towards us ... look at their reaction to the state of israel's being established in 1948 ... look at the way many there STILL resent the crusades, hundreds of years ago

and this will have some effect on our safety ... especially seeing as the conclusion some countries have drawn from our invasion of iraq and our non-invasion of north korea is that if a country has wmd, it won't get invaded ... we've motivated countries strongly ... either to give up wmd and terrorism, in the case of libya ... or to embrace it, in the case of iran

also, other countries such as russia, china and india are being motivated to take a stronger role as regional powers to prevent our projection of power in their backyards ... in short, depending on how we react to this, we could be a lot safer if we stand down ... or in a lot more danger if we continue
posted by pyramid termite at 11:06 AM on September 24, 2006


The fact that there are still supporters of this war completely dumbfounds me.
posted by Balisong at 11:39 AM on September 24, 2006


this might be the best den Beste smackdown ever! how do your own idiotic words taste after they've dried in the sunlight of reality like so many cowpies, steven?
posted by Hat Maui at 1:18 PM on September 24, 2006


President Bush dismisses Iraq violence as “just a comma” in history.
posted by ericb at 2:37 PM on September 24, 2006


At least Rumsfeld finally has his answers.

In fifty years I shall be dead; and, hopefully, my son will be my mother's age and any grandchildren he gives me will be nearly my current age and bearing the burdens of our present actions (GWOT) and inactions (climate change).

As much as I want grandchildren, that thought makes me sad.

The first time I heard someone in the administration mention Iraq I said wtf? I talked to my mother and she said wtf, too.

Each time they mentioned Iraq in the march to war I got on Google and was able to find credible debunking of their claims within 1 - 48 hours of the utterance. Much of that debunking information has since been confirmed by our government. Of course, what took me a few hours or days to find took our government years to confirm and they're not done yet.

I think this election cycle may be our last chance to give everyone's grandchildren a break. We can't lift the whole burden of what's been done but we can throw the bums out, impeach both Bush and Cheney, and censure the bejesus out of folks like Frist, McCain, Warner, et al.

If we don't put some teeth into the House and Senate now, I don't think 2008 will really matter that much to our grandchildren. We shall have failed to protect and defend the Constitution for them. We shall have failed to prosecute the creators of their financial and political debt. We shall have failed to preserve for them what remains of a healthy environment.
posted by taosbat at 2:49 PM on September 24, 2006


The fact that there are still supporters of this war completely dumbfounds me.

Never forget that this is the same country that re-elected Ronald Reagan and George Bush Jr.

We would be the world's laughing stock, except that we're also hated. It's like having a retarded cousin come over to your house: sure, it's kinda funny how he talks funny and does stupid shit, but it's not funny when he's busting up your place and spilling Coke all over your rare baseball card collection, even when you warned him to be careful, even though he did the same damned thing last time he came over to your house...
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:40 PM on September 24, 2006


Maybe I'm too young to remember it all, but I'd happily take Reagan over what we have now. He did manage to have a few people that understood foreigh policy (namely, George Bush).

Fancy that. A librul nostalgic for Reagan. Yes, I'm serious.
posted by bardic at 3:53 PM on September 24, 2006 [1 favorite]


Oh, hell, I'd take Nixon back at this point. At least his crimes were limited to trying to dig up slime on his political opponents.
posted by EarBucket at 4:01 PM on September 24, 2006 [1 favorite]


He visited China, and that took some guts. Bush II has none.
posted by bardic at 4:10 PM on September 24, 2006


It's like having a retarded cousin

A rather memorable simile.
posted by sonofsamiam at 4:15 PM on September 24, 2006


C_D, that was a disgusting and awful simile. I realize that defending the mentally handicapped doesn't garner the same attention as defending stupid stereotypes of gays, blacks, or "insert religion here", but seriously, a guy with your intellect should be above making "retard jokes".
posted by SeizeTheDay at 5:32 PM on September 24, 2006


C_D, that's a piss-poor metaphor you've got going there. America's the cousin, and we're visiting Iraq's house, right? So "spilling Coke all over your rare baseball card collection" undersells the situation quite a bit. I mean, that's Mayor Daley at the 1968 convention. The U.S. in Iraq -- that's more like "some rich, fucked-up relative of your step-dad who's pretty high-up in the police department decides it's time to burn down your house with you and your whole family in it." Not quite the same thing, is it?

BTW, my retarded cousin has always been quite careful with our belongings and has never "busted up" anything other than fights between me and my brother. Of course, YMMV, retarded-cousin-wise.

However, delusions have a tendency to eventually collide with reality, and when that happens the delusions get punctured

M. den Beste, it seems your delusions are holding up rather well, despite repeated and increasingly harsh collisions with reality. I congratulate you on your foresighted investment in steel-belted delusions, and I'm sure they're a comfort to you now. As long as you rely on that comfort, please have the common decency to shut your festering gob.

Everything you know about foreign policy could slip undetected into O'Reilly's falafel-constricted urethra. Even you must recognize that now, if only in your most shameful heart-of-hearts (right there next to the eneurisis file). The glorious benefits you predicted from the Puissant Dubya's grand crusade have not come to pass. In fact, it's all blown up in your face like a slapstick cigar.

Which is still better than having an IED blow up in your face, right? Or are you still trying to sell a war you're not willing to fight?

You were wrong. Think about why you were wrong, and how, and what that might say about the current situation and what to do going forward.

Until you're ready to do that, you have nothing to say.
posted by vetiver at 6:56 PM on September 24, 2006


A rather memorable simile.

You're right. Comparing Republicans with the mentally retarded is severely unfair to the retarded. My apologies.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:00 AM on September 25, 2006


look at the way many there STILL resent the crusades, hundreds of years ago
posted by pyramid termite at 11:06 AM PST


There are American Indians who still don't like what the US of A government did to them.

You will always find a group of 'dangerous radicals who say/or take action WRT harm' for some violation, real, imagined, or not all that important. Things that happened to someone else whom you never knew is hard to get upset to the point of using violence. When it is your childern, spouse, parents or grandparents...violent action becomes much eaiser to contemplate.

If you have ever thought "If X happened to Y I'd kill the Z who did this", why should you be shocked when other people have such a reaction?
posted by rough ashlar at 5:34 AM on September 25, 2006


U.S. Army extends Iraq duty for 4,000
posted by taosbat at 7:51 AM on September 25, 2006


"West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called on Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte today to declassify the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to the 'fullest extent possible,' after portions of it were leaked to the New York Times and other news organizations."
posted by ericb at 2:19 PM on September 25, 2006


Retired military officers criticize Rumsfeld at Democratic hearing

Updated 9/25/2006 3:02 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — Retired military officers on Monday bluntly accused Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of bungling the war in Iraq, saying U.S. troops were sent to fight without the best equipment and that critical facts were hidden from the public...

"I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq," retired Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said in remarks prepared for a hearing by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

A second witness, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, assessed Rumsfeld as "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically ...."

"Mr. Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making," he added in testimony prepared for the hearing, held six weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections in which the war is a central issue...

...a government-produced National Intelligence Estimate became public that concluded the war has helped create a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001...

It is unusual for retired military officers to criticize the Pentagon while military operations are underway, particularly at a public event likely to draw widespread media attention.

But Batiste, Eaton and retired Col. Paul X. Hammes were unsparing in remarks that suggested deep anger at the way the military had been treated. All three served in Iraq, and Batiste also was senior military assistant to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Batiste, who commanded the Army's 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, also blamed Congress for failing to ask "the tough questions."

He said Rumsfeld at one point threatened to fire the next person who mentioned the need for a postwar plan in Iraq.

Batiste said if full consideration had been given to the requirements for war, it's likely the U.S. would have kept its focus on Afghanistan, "not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents."

Hammes said in his prepared remarks that not providing the best equipment was a "serious moral failure on the part of our leadership."

The United States "did not ask our soldiers to invade France in 1944 with the same armor they trained on in 1941. Why are we asking our soldiers and Marines to use the same armor we found was insufficient in 2003," he asked.

Hammes was responsible for establishing bases for the Iraqi armed forces. He served in Iraq in 2004 and is now Marine Senior Military Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, National Defense University.

Eaton was responsible for training the Iraqi military and later for rebuilding the Iraqi police force.

He said planning for the postwar period was "amateurish at best, incompetent a better descriptor."
posted by taosbat at 2:31 PM on September 25, 2006


Check out this shit: Newsweek's international editions vs. the US edition
posted by amberglow at 3:54 PM on September 25, 2006


Perhaps this thread can go for 30 days like a different thread.

The theme: Iraq worsens terror.

The White House acknowledged that Iraq was among several factors that "fuel the spread of jihadism,"
posted by rough ashlar at 8:11 PM on September 25, 2006


amberglow: yikes! Americans without internet are living in a real information ghetto.
posted by sonofsamiam at 8:18 PM on September 25, 2006


you don't know the half of it, sonofsam--and tons of the people online only read drudge and fox and lgf and stuff.
posted by amberglow at 8:30 PM on September 25, 2006


Check out this shit: Newsweek's international editions vs. the US edition

they're giving the people who buy each edition what they want ... overseas, they want news, information

here, they want fluff

we can blame the media i suppose ... but i'm more inclined to blame the american people ... they don't WANT to know
posted by pyramid termite at 8:46 PM on September 25, 2006


Another Secret Iraq Report
"Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, today disclosed the existence of a second classified National Intelligence Estimate 'that gives a grim assessment of the situation in Iraq, and called for it to be shared with the American public — before the November elections.'"
posted by ericb at 12:54 PM on September 26, 2006


Bush releases declassified version [PDF] of the April National Intelligence Estimate. "The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."

posted by ericb at 2:25 PM on September 26, 2006


Iraq is 'cause celebre' for extremists
"The war in Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment of the U.S. that probably will get worse before it gets better, federal intelligence analysts conclude in a report at odds with President Bush's portrayal of a world growing safer....

Bush and his top advisers have said the formerly classified assessment of global terrorism supported their arguments that the world is safer because of the war. But more than three pages of stark judgments warning about the spread of terrorism contrasted with the administration's glass-half-full declarations.

[Associated Press | September 27, 2006]
Study Doesn’t Share Bush’s Optimism on Terror Fight
"...the intelligence report bears none of Mr. Bush’s long-range optimism. Rather it dwells on Mr. Rumsfeld’s darker question, which he put cheekily as, 'Is our current situation such that ‘the harder we work, the behinder we get?'"

[New York Times | September 27,2006]
posted by ericb at 11:16 AM on September 27, 2006


Intelligence Analysts Puzzled Over NIE Release
National Intelligence Estimates are notorious for being watered down, partly because analysts spread across 16 different spy agencies often have difficulty settling on just the right words.

That’s what makes the tough language in this week’s terrorism analysis all the more striking. And it has left many puzzling over why the White House decided to release it.

To almost any reader, the assessment of trends in global terror for the next five years looks grim. It warns that most jihadist groups “will use improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks” on “soft targets.” It cautions that extremists still seek chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. And it contemplates whether other types of leftist or separatist groups, such as anti-globalism factions, could adopt terrorist methods.

One former insider sees even more. Robert Hutchings, who headed the National Intelligence Council when the estimate was launched in 2004, called the document “a very severe indictment of, not just the administration, but where we as a country have found ourselves five years after 9/11.”

“It says the jihad is spreading, expanding and intensifying,” said Hutchings, who left the council in early 2005 and is now at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

[Associated Press | September 27, 2006]
posted by ericb at 7:23 PM on September 27, 2006


Another Report Refuting Iraq Gains
"In a second blow to the president, a new U.N. report said the Iraq war was providing al Qaeda with a training center and fresh recruits, and was inspiring a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan hundreds of miles away.

...The U.N. report released on Wednesday jibed with the NEI's conclusions.

'New explosive devices are now used in Afghanistan within a month of their first appearing in Iraq,' it said. 'And while the Taliban have not been found fighting outside Afghanistan/Pakistan, there have been reports of them training in both Iraq and Somalia.'

The U.N. report was prepared by terrorism experts for the Security Council."

[Reuters | September 27, 2006]
posted by ericb at 8:35 PM on September 27, 2006


Bush says critics swayed by terrorist propaganda
29/09/2006 15h39

WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush accused some Iraq war critics, who have seized on US government findings that the conflict fuels terrorist recruitment, of buying into "the enemy's propaganda."

...

The president used a speech here Friday to shoot back at those who use the document to "make the case that by fighting the terrorists, by fighting them in Iraq, we are making our people less secure here at home."

"This argument buys into the enemy's propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we're provoking them," he charged. "You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism."

"If that ever becomes the mindset of the policymakers in Washington, it means we'll go back to the old days of waiting to be attacked and then respond," he said Friday.

"Iraq is not the reason the terrorists are at war against us. They are at war against us because they hate everything America stands for," said the president.

A day after explicitly labelling Democrats "the party of cut and run," and saying they "offer nothing but criticism, obstruction and endless second-guessing," Bush never referred to the opposition party by name.

Instead, he referred to anonymous naysayers he dubbed "the critics" as he accused them of being wrong about the multinational effort to stabilize Afghanistan and rout the Taliban militia ousted by US-led forces in late 2001.

"From the beginning, American people have heard the critics say we're failing. But the reasons keep changing," he said.

"In order to win a war, in order to win the ideological struggle of the 21st century, it is important for this country to have a clear strategy and change tactics to meet the conditions on the ground, not try to constantly respond to the critics who change their positions," he said.
posted by taosbat at 11:17 AM on September 29, 2006


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